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About The IGF

IndieGames.com is presented by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, which runs the Independent Games Festival & Summit every year at Game Developers Conference. The company (producer of the Game Developers Conference series, Gamasutra.com and Game Developer magazine) established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers.

Archive For October, 2006

MELISSA is another shooter by Weva which configures your joypad automatically but features bland sprites and a snail pace.

Hold the X key to shoot, or press the Z key to change your weapon assuming that at least one power-up has been collected. Definitely a labor of love but one that will be overlooked by shmup veterans with an acquired taste for frantic action. A download is located right after the section which explains power-ups and their effects, while the default unzip folder is in C drive.

Pronounced Z-corb, Zcorb is an action game that arrived on the scene twenty years too late. A mix of Pac-Man and Qix, your objective is to collect all the chips on screen while dodging other moving objects.

Use the arrow keys to move Xippie around, and hold the shift key to accelerate. Press the O key to bring up the configuration menu when the title is shown. The download page has an online high score table that you can submit your best achievement to as well. A cncs232.dll file has to be placed in the same folder for it to run properly, fortunately it's available from the same location.

Vector is another game by that is based on an interesting concept but flawed in execution. Your ship can be moved around using the W, A, S and D keys. The player is required to draw a line in order to fire a shot, which can lead to an undesirably high number of random mouse clicks.

There's a unique boss encounter in every fifth stage, though implementing dual analog input should have been the developer's main priority. Innovation is great, but going against standard control method preferences for the sake of accomodating a streak of ingenuity will always be a risk. In this case, alienating most of the target audience and discouraging many from playing further than the first few levels.

StarTag is a decent Thrust variation with emphasis on mini-games. Sprites and level designs are pretty enough, plus several multiplayer modes are made available for some party fun. Only four keys are required to play, with one button reserved for special moves.

Tasks include navigating mazes, collecting coins, flying through hoops, popping bubbles, avoiding bombs or being tagged by your opponents. Only three of these can be accessed in the demo.

Bad, Bad Bots is a decent 2D platform puzzler which requires no precision jumps. Instead the player has to figure out a way to reach the exit in each stage by unlocking doors, disabling fans, activating teleporters and pushing crates amongst other actions.

The first few levels act as tutorials, providing hints and explanations on every gadget to be encountered in your journey. Another quality entry in this year's IGF competition.

Cramgene is a pretty interesting puzzler from Yamisoft Entertainment. The objective of the game is to feed your pet before your opponent does, by splicing genes and creating a creature which matches exactly the one they're thinking of.

Choose creatures from your stock to examine their DNA strands, then pick the traits you need to create the right meal for your pet by determining matching genes. The gameplay system is a little complicated but fortunately the tutorial offers proper guidance to get any player started in just a matter of minutes.

The difficulty can be adjusted from the options menu, plus the trial version is not time limited. Don't be fooled by the graphics, even for grown-ups the game can be quite challenging.

Dizzy has had it's fair share of halfhearted remakes. With Spud's Quest, fans no longer need to endure such indignity though our lovable egg has now been replaced with a protagonist named Spud.

You can only carry three items at any time, so expect a lot of backtracking in this game. Items are regularly placed inside houses, while grabbing the pliers require an incredibly precise jump. It's left to the player to figure out that Spud can stand on clouds.

Trick or Treat is an alright action game made by Dustin Gunn and Steven Burgess for a small Halloween competition. Featuring mostly ghouls and skeletons, the sprites looked pretty decent but gameplay itself is rather mediocre after the initial excitement fades off.

Still, it fits well with the holiday theme and there's nothing wrong with a free platformer spanning five levels. Note that swinging the chainsaw is slightly more effective against skeletons in some cases.

Anyone looking for their common casual matching variety will be fairly suprised with D.N.A as the gameplay in this one requires a lot of thought, especially if you're not very good at recalling color combinations.

The player has to match at least ten proteins to burst a cell, a task made harder by the fact that they don't stay still in one place. There's a quota to fulfill in each level, and time ticks away for every second the player spends on mulling over their next move.

The puzzle mode is much more relaxing as the time restriction is removed, but one mistake means repeating the whole challenge all over again.

A fairly notable entry with an extremely slick presentation, something that would have been expected from a Japanese game development studio. Definitely a publisher to keep an eye on.